Citrus juice extraction on a commercial scale can be advantageously performed with a juice extractor including upper and lower cups that move relative to one another along a reciprocal path of travel. The sides of both the upper and lower cups typically comprise fingers that support a fruit so that it can be squeezed without bursting. The fingers of the upper cup interdigitate or intermesh with those of the lower cup.
An orange or other fruit can be fed, for example, to the bottom cup by a cam-operated feeding device. The upper and lower cups are then brought together so that the respective fingers of the cup intermesh and the fruit therebetween is accordingly squeezed. Sharp, typically circular, cutters are positioned in the top and bottom cups. As the cups move relative to one another, the fruit is pressed against the cutters. The cutters cut plugs from both the top and bottom portions of the fruit as the interdigitating fingers of the two cups mesh together.
The cutting of the plug from the top portion of the fruit promotes separation of the peel from the internal portions of the fruit (i.e., juice and pulp). The plug cut from the lower portion of the fruit allows the internal portions of the fruit to be forced down into a strainer tube positioned just below the lower cup cutter. The strainer tube, in turn, is positioned within a manifold.
Such whole fruit juice extraction is disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,970,861; 5,992,311; 5,996,485; and 6,568,319, for example, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. Moreover, various fruit feeding arrangements have been developed for juice extractors. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,040,864; 3,367,473; 3,499,519; 4,309,944 and 4,343,393 disclose such fruit feeding arrangements.
A typical fruit feeder includes a drive shaft, a plurality of fruit feed members for feeding fruit to the juice extracting positions based upon rotation of the drive shaft, and a drive motor. A rotatable drive hub is rotatably carried by the drive shaft and connected to the drive motor, a fixed hub is fixed to the drive shaft adjacent the rotatable drive hub, and a shear pin extends between the rotatable drive hub and the fixed hub. The shear pin may couple the rotatable drive hub and the fixed hub together during normal operation, and shear to decouple the rotatable drive hub from the fixed hub when the fruit feed members become jammed.
Unfortunately, a typical juice processing plant may have banks of extractors attended by relatively few operators. Accordingly, a feeder may become jammed and the shear pin may fail incapacitating extraction until an operator discovers the incapacitated extractor and replaces the shear pin. This may cause an undesirable loss in productivity.